Semiconductor devices are used in a variety of electronic applications, such as personal computers, cell phones, digital cameras, and other electronic equipment, as examples. Semiconductor devices are typically fabricated by sequentially depositing insulating (or dielectric) layers, conductive layers and semiconductive layers of material over a semiconductor substrate, and patterning the various layers using lithography to form circuit components and elements thereon.
A transistor is an element that is utilized extensively in semiconductor devices. There may be millions of transistors on a single integrated circuit (IC), for example. A common type of transistor used in semiconductor device fabrication is a metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET).
Early MOSFET processes used one type of doping to create either positive or negative channel transistors. More recent designs, referred to as complimentary MOS (CMOS) devices, use both positive and negative channel devices in complimentary configurations. While this requires more manufacturing steps and more transistors, CMOS devices are advantageous because they utilize less power, and the devices may be made smaller and faster.
The gate dielectric for MOSFET devices has in the past typically comprised silicon dioxide, which has a dielectric constant of about 3.9. However, as devices are scaled down in size, using silicon dioxide for a gate dielectric becomes a problem because of gate leakage current, which can degrade device performance.
To fully realize the benefits of transistor scaling, the gate oxide thickness needs to be scaled down to less than 2 nm. However, the resulting gate leakage current makes the use of such thin oxides impractical in many device applications where low standby power consumption is required. For this reason, there is a trend in the industry towards the development of the use of high dielectric constant (k) materials for use as the gate dielectric in MOSFET devices. The term “high k materials” as used herein refers to a dielectric material having a dielectric constant of greater than about 7.8.
High k gate dielectric development has been identified as one of the future challenges in the 2002 edition of International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS), incorporated herein by reference, which identifies the technological challenges and needs facing the semiconductor industry over the next 15 years. For low power logic (for portable electronic applications, for example), it is important to use devices having low leakage current, in order to extend battery life. Gate leakage current must be controlled in low power applications, as well as sub-threshold leakage, junction leakage, and band-to-band tunneling.
However, one problem with using high k materials as gate dielectrics is lower mobility, which is undesirable. The performance of devices with high k dielectric materials tends to suffer from trapped charge in the dielectric layer, which deteriorates the mobility, making the drive current lower than in transistors having silicon dioxide gate oxides, thus reducing the speed and performance of transistors having high k gate dielectric materials.
Another problem with using high k materials as a gate dielectric is that if polysilicon is used as a gate material, which is the most common type of gate material currently used, in conjunction with a high k gate dielectric, polysilicon (poly) depletion can occur between the gate dielectric and the gate. When a CMOS device is operated in an inversion mode, poly depletion causes an increase in the electrical equivalent gate oxide thickness, e.g., by about 4 to 5 Angstroms. It is desirable for the gate capacitance to be relatively high for increased gate control. However, poly depletion decreases the capacitance and lowers the drive current of the CMOS device, which is undesirable.
What is needed in the art is a transistor design that does not exhibit the poly depletion effect, and that has low leakage current and high mobility.